SOME girls will buy a cheap leather jacket and run it through the Maytag, or take a Brillo to a pristine pair of combat boots, roughing them up for that “I’ve seen action at Glastonbury” feel.

Those girls are apt to be found haunting AllSaints Spitalfields, the
British retail chain and purveyor of a romantically pre-aged look — all
dun-colored bustle skirts, fatigued leather satchels and battered
canvas boots that conjure a sepia-tone universe straight out of the
gaslight era.

The AllSaints New York outpost on Lower Broadway, the latest, and
largest, in this fast proliferating brand, was conceived, so it seems,
as a showcase for the beat-up trappings of an early industrial age. Its
exposed brick walls and wood-and-steel-beam floors, and signature rows
of old sewing machines suggest nothing so much as an East London
warehouse fallen into desuetude.

The store’s alluringly sinister aura is, in fact, a major selling
point, a mood that has been faithfully replicated in most of the
company’s 70-plus shops around the world. The plan is “to offer the
same consistency, globally,” Paul McAdam, the chief executive of
AllSaints North America, said in an interview. “We don’t tailor our
offering for any specific store or population.”